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YesAsia Editorial Description

Choi Min Sik and Ha Jung Woo take the Busan underworld by storm in the crime blockbuster Nameless Gangster. Set in the 1980-90s during the golden age of gangsters, the film revolves around the fair-weather partnership between a mob boss and a crooked customs officer. All is well when the money's rolling, but they find themselves in the middle of the crossfire when the government declares war on crime. Directed by Yoon Jong Bin (Beastie Boys), the colorful and violent gangland drama won the Grand Prize at the 48th Baeksang Arts Awards.

Corrupt customs officer Ik Hyun (Choi Min Sik) and his cohorts are under investigation for taking bribes, and he's being pressured to take the fall. When he comes across a giant stash of heroine, Ik Hyun decides to secretly sell it off through crime boss Hyung Bae (Ha Jung Woo), whom it turns out is actually Ik Hyun's relative. With Hyung Bae's yakuza connections and Ik Hyun's networking skills, the two form a very profitable partnership in these roaring times. But when the government cracks down, the partnership begins to derail.

This edition comes with making-of features, music making, premiere, trailer, and other extras.

YumCha! Asian Entertainment Reviews and Features

Choi Min Sik, one of Korea's most respected and popular actors, stars in Nameless Gangster, a crime biopic that charts the rise of a customs official to the heights of the criminal underworld. Written and directed by Yoon Jong Bin (Beastie Boys), the film also stars Ha Jung Woo (Love Fiction), and takes a very different approach to most other Korean gangster pics, with a boldly amoral and distinctly unglamorous stance. Despite this, and some fairly shocking violence, the film proved incredibly popular at the local box office, emerging as one of the most watched films at Korean cinemas in 2012 so far, in addition to winning the Grand Prize at the 48th Baeksang Arts Awards.

Set in Busan during the 1980s and 1990s, the film begins with the arrest of businessman Ik Hyun (Choi Min Sik, Oldboy) for embezzlement, kidnapping and assault, as part of the government's new crackdown on organised crime. Put under pressure from chief public prosecutor Jo Bum Suk (Kwak Do Wan, Head), Il Hyun's story unfolds, following his beginnings as a customs officer who is set up for a fall when he and his colleagues run into trouble for taking bribes. After he comes across a massive stash of heroin, he is surprised to find that the gangster he tries to sell it to, local boss Hyung Bae (Ha Jung Woo), is actually a relative and part of the Choi clan. Il Hyun quickly becomes seduced by the gangster life and partners with Hyung Bae, using his business skills and connections to help them both. However, he soon starts getting ideas above his station, and when a turf war brews with Kim Pan Ho (Jo Jin Woong, Perfect Game), things rapidly spiral out of control.

Right from the start, Nameless Gangster is somewhat reminiscent of Scorsese's Goodfellas and Casino with the same kind of keen eye for period detail and style, Yoon Jong Bin bringing back the 1980s and 1990s with a fine collection of pop songs, costumes and hairdos. The film certainly looks gorgeous throughout, with some excellent production values, and has the same kind of ambitious fractured narrative, jumping back and forth between past and present, at times taking on a confessional air, though never becoming too flashback-heavy. Thankfully, Yoon avoids the kind of self-indulgent long windedness which has marred many Scorsese outings, managing instead to keep things tight and grounded, and though Nameless Gangster is at two hours and fifteen minutes a long film, it's never anything less than utterly engrossing, helped along by some well-handled action scenes and gritty brutality.

As a rise and fall crime biopic, the film is bold and reasonably atypical, in that its chief protagonist is a largely unlikeable and unsympathetic figure, as indeed are most of its supporting cast of criminals. The film has a distinct lack of any moral compass or judgemental air, though Yoon at the same time doesn't take the easy route of simply sitting back, investing a huge amount of detail and depth in his characters and making the story a very human one. Il Hyun is certainly a fascinating figure, an ever-struggling survivor who is clearly willing to do whatever it takes to fight his corner, violent and volatile, though knowing when to grovel. This makes the film far more convincing than other crime tales, as does its pushing aside of the usual illusions of loyalty and brotherhood. Yoo uses Il Hyun's story to shine a harsh light on corruption and nepotism in Korean society, as he tirelessly networks and milks every Choi family connection possible, allowing him to manipulate and win favours from the police, prosecutors and politicians.

Unsurprisingly, the film belongs mainly to Choi Min Sik, who is superb as Il Hyun. The actor clearly put on a great deal of weight for the role, and is at times almost unrecognisable, exuding mixture of ruthlessness and wretched desperation. Crumpled, sweating, overweight and hopelessly loud-mouthed, he is pretty much the polar opposite of the usual kind of detached, super-cool figures seen in the Korean genre, and this further sets the film apart in its powerful demystifying of the romantic gangster image. The rest of the cast are similarly on top form, Ha Jung Woo in particular as the very different Hyung Bae, slowly drawn into accepting Il Hyun into his life and gang, and this makes the film's various relationships all the more effective, not to mention hard hitting when all the inevitable betrayals and back stabbing begins.

All of this combines to make Nameless Gangster not only the best Korean gangster film in several years, but also one of the best films in general. Gripping, immaculately directed and anchored by Choi Min Sik's towering performance, it stands as a near masterpiece of the crime genre, and proves again what can be achieved with a great script and investment in character.

If you've seen a few gangster films, you will find virtually no surprise in Nameless Gangster. Director Yoon Jong Bin's gangster epic faithfully follows the basic narrative structure of its genre counterparts, from the rise of a normal man to his inevitable fall from grace. However, Nameless Gangster does have two things that set it apart: Choi Min Sik and the detestable protagonist he plays.

Choi Ik Hyun (Choi Min Sik) is not your typical gangster hero; he doesn't know how to fight, he cowers like a mouse when he's threatened, and he will turn his back on anyone no longer useful to him. Characters like Ik Hyun are usually the villains of a gangster film, but Yoon isn't afraid to shy from reality, showing with Ik Hyun's journey that those willing to play dirty will always get ahead in the world.

In Ik Hyun's case, the things that lead him to the top of the Busan crime world are desperation and his obsession with age-based hierarchy in Korean culture. A low-level customs officer, Ik Hyun is about to be sent to jail as the scapegoat for his entire team's blatant corruption (because he has the fewest number of kids to support, his boss tells him) when he comes across a seized shipment of drugs. In the process of selling the drugs, Ik Hyun latches on to young crime boss Hyung Bae (Ha Jung Woo) by discovering that they are from the same family clan. Ik Hyun soon gets out of the corrupted civil servant world and becomes Hyung Bae's partner-in-crime.

Except for an interesting exploration of blatant corruption in Korean society in the late 1980s, Yoon's script is fairly standard, with betrayals, egos, and cops driving the two gangster bosses apart. Even though the story isn't always engaging, the two stars are at the top of their game. Ha is surprisingly sympathetic as Hyung Bae, playing the moral compass of the film in comparison to Ik Hyun's conniving character. However, Choi owns the spotlight whenever he's on screen, turning up his theatrics to command the screen without going overboard. The result is a crackerjack performance that makes Ik Hyun always fascinating to watch, even when he is ultimately one of the most irredeemable protagonists in recent memory.

Gangster films tend to follow commercial film cliché by showing audiences that even a likeable person can be destroyed by the crime world, like a person in a pool of hungry sharks. Yoon realizes that he doesn't have to show the carnage to scare people off - all he has to do is show the sharks.